San Francisco Conservatory
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) is an elite music school with an enrollment of about 400 undergraduate and graduate students, located at 50 Oak Street, San Francisco, California. The highly acclaimed Pre-College Division offers a comprehensive music education to gifted young musicians.
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music was founded in 1917 by Ada Clement and Lillian Hodghead as the Ada Clement Piano School. Its first location was the home of Lillian's parents, at 3435 Sacramento Street. The school opened with three pianos, four studios, two blackboards and 40 students.
The Ada Clement Piano School quickly expanded. Several years after its founding, the name changed to the Ada Clement Music School, and then in 1923 to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 1956 the Conservatory moved from Sacramento Street to 1201 Ortega Street, the home of a former infant shelter. It resided there for fifty years, before moving to its current location at 50 Oak Street in 2006.
Conservatory Leaders:
The school is currently located at 50 Oak Street.
San Francisco Conservatory of Music offers music education in addition to community enrichment programs and world-class performances. This expansion of the school will dramatically increase its instructional and performance opportunities as well as its contribution to the cultural life of the Bay Area. The Oak Street facility almost doubles the square footage of the Conservatory's old site at Ortega Street in the largely residential Sunset District and positions the 84-year-old college of music in the arts nexus of San Francisco, amid Davies Symphony Hall, the War Memorial Opera House, the Asian Art Museum and other prominent arts-related venues and institutions.
Acquired around March 2000, the conservatory's Civic Center location includes two existing buildings, 50 and 70 Oak Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin. With its historically significant facades and relatively sound structure, 50 Oak Street has been restored and reconfigured, while adjoining 70 Oak has been rebuilt in a complementary and contemporary design. Together almost 73,000 net square feet of space are available to accommodate the conservatory's needs for acoustically correct studios, practice rooms and performance spaces as well as classrooms, offices and an expanded library.
Among the facility's highlights is the innovative utilization of the existing grand ballroom with its elegant gilt columns and ornate 38' ceiling as the audience chamber for the new Concert Hall, augmented by state-of-the-art performance amenities. This Concert Hall seats up to 450; a new Recital Hall seats up to 160 and a smaller Salon seats up to 120.
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